Random Rant of the Day: Screw fancy restraurants!

[Battleaxx90]

Seriously, what's the point? Let's go over the reasons as to why they suck:

#1: Long waiting times

In more than one sense of the word. First of all, if the restaurant is popular, there'll be an hours-long waiting list to even get in, and that's if you're lucky. If you're unlucky, you'll have to wait days, or even WEEKS to get in! And once you DO get in, what's next? Oh, just some more waiting. Hour-long waits for the menus to arrive, hour-long waits for the food to arrive, and it's all for...

#2: Macroscopic food portions

Sure, they say that good things take time. But if you're going to take eons to cook up a piece of food no bigger than my fist, than I think I'd rather eat my beard that I didn't walk into the restaurant with. I wouldn't mind the wait if it looked like it actually TOOK time, but in most cases, it looks like the chef was taste-testing it the whole way through, leaving almost nothing left. Fun fact: Any old schmuck can buy a cookbook with 20-minute recipes and can make them taste good as long as they know what they're doing. Speaking of making it taste good

#3: The food's no better than any other restaurant

Here's a fun little story: A few months back, I was taken to a fancy restaurant somewhere in Sydney for a cousin's wedding, where I ordered some lasagne. It took two hours to get to my table and the lasagne was passable at best. The next week, me and my mates went out to some Italian restaurant in the suburbs, where I again ordered lasagne, which was the best damn lasagne I ever tasted. What's the point of going to a fancy restaurant if I can get better food at some small-time restaurant that's struggling to pay its bills? Speaking of money...

#4: It's too zetta expensive

That fancy restaurant I mentioned above? Five bucks for a glass of Coke. I think you all know where I'm going with this.

In summary, I fail to see the appeal of fancy restaurants, due to the fact that you have to wait for hours for an expensive morsel of food that isn't even very good. I have no idea what everybody sees in them, but I for one am never going to another one of those scams again if I can help it.

A'ight, that's enough of me. Tell me what you think about fancy restaurants in the comment section below. Either that, or hype over the fact that I'm from Australia. Either one's good. Or you could prove me wrong, also an option. Either way, I'm out. See ya, mates!

 

[RemuValtrez]

People with money feel that they have to go to places that charge a lot, to mis-quote Shadow's Edge (Night Angel Trilogy book 2), "You should charge double for that, otherwise my lord will not believe it will work."

Rich people believe that the best things in life HAVE to cost a lot, otherwise they are no better than everyone else.

 

[Battleaxx90]

Rich people believe that the best things in life HAVE to cost a lot, otherwise they are no better than everyone else.

This sums up hats in TF2 quite nicely.

 

[TheIronRuler]

It is sometimes summed up by the fact that some people want to be seen eating in those places, as if they belong to some social class that can afford it, rather than actually wanting to eat from that particular kitchen so much that they'll pay too much money.

 

[Girl With One Eye]

Higher costs imply higher quality which is why people go there, it's more about status than the food.

 

[CouchCommando]

yeah dude tell it like it is ,I Once took a new flame to a restaurant on Sydney Harbor, after the subsequent mortgage, we made a pact to cook one another dinner, much more romantic any way you slice it as well........I mean the beds just there in the next room isn't it.

 

[Battleaxx90]

well your first problem is easily rectified
YOU BOOK
how is that a confusing principle?

Good idea. Too bad 50-odd people usually thought of that before I did.

 

[Queen Michael]

well your first problem is easily rectified
YOU BOOK
how is that a confusing principle?

Yeah, but the thing is, last week I went to my favorite restaurant to have a nice meal. I entered the restaurant and got seated. That was it.

Concerning the price: A rule of thumb that I've got is that things that are a bit more expensive are usually a bit better. Things that are a lot more expensive usually aren't.

 

[r0binh00d]

I've been to some 'fancy' restraunts, used to be a chef myself and often cook what might be considered 'fancy' meals for myself, but can quite happily live on beer and pizza until the end of time.

I've also been to (and worked in) plenty of pub-food type / 2 star hotels, and through my experiences come to these conclusions:

1. The quality of food in a restaraunt is quite often mostly dependent on the quality of the head chef running the kitchen that night

2. Fancy restaraunts have the same good to bad ratio as pubs, 2 star hotels, burger vans, etc. Some are good, some are fantastic, some are woeful. However with fancy restaraunts there is also a third category of restaraunt - trying to be fancy. This fits in between normal and fancy, and can sometimes result in a good restaraunt - think carefully cooked and well presented food but without the premium price tag. However it also goes the other way, crap food that costs you your month's wages.

3. It's very hard to tell how good a place is without eating there yourself, atleast once.

4. Sometimes a shithole will surprise you, and vice versa.

The most fancy restaraunt I ever ate at was featured in Gordon Ramsay's kitchen nightmares. *before* i ate there, that is
personally I found the food was awful, if you've ever had pork cheek as a main dish then you can probably see why I don't like it. It was well cooked though, but IMO it was a silly thing to do.
There is this idea that if you get a cheap cut of meat (something fatty like cheek or belly rather than sirloin or fillet) and spend more time cooking it, it somehow reflects how good a chef you are / tastes better.

Both are true to an extent, but a cheap cut isn't *just* cheap because of the extra time required to cook it. That and the minicsule portions thing really annoyed me, and not just me - I was there on a function with about 30 people and most complained.

However I also ate at a rather fancy place in (I think) Inverness which struck the balance between portion size and quality rather nicely, and cooked me a steak rather than a peice of shin or hoof marinaded for 4 days and slow-cooked.

As the saying goes, you can polish a turd....

 

[Battleaxx90]

I agree completely.

As for an anecdote, I once went to a fancy restaurant as well, but it was like a stealth fancy restaurant because it looked quite ordinary.
Anyway, I was there with my then-girlfriend, after a 16 hour workday in construction, so I was incredibly hungry.
So, I order my food, steak with mushroom sauce, and we wait. And wait. The food arrived after an hour.
Let me describe the food. A piece of steak of 6x6x1.5 dimensions, in centimeters, a smear of sauce next to the meat that would have maybe filled half a teaspoon.
6 beans. I shit you not, SIX beans.
And finally, half a potato.

So I thank the waiter for the appetizer, then do /sarcasm and ask him where the fuck the rest of my food is.
So he says this is what you get, blabla appreciate the art and stuff.
Yeah. First time in my life I did a dine & dash.

I don't care that it's theft, I don't care it's a crime, I am not paying 25? for 2 bites of steak, six beans and half a potato.
Then we took the money we had saved, went to a grill place and gorged ourselves on fantastically good ribs and whatnot for half the price.
Fuck fancy restaurants.

Nice to see that not only does somebody agree with me, but agree with me in an absolutely hilarious way. Please accept this cookie.

...yeah, I don't know why I did that either.

 

[Duol]

You obviously haven't been to any real fancy restaurants.

Excellent cooking

Great ingredients

Superb Service

Grow some taste buds, not to mention taste in general.

 

[Double A]

Fancy restaurants are crap. They serve food that is average most times and just dress it up. However, gourmet restaurants (or at least the one I've been to) are the exception to the rule: You actually get what you pay for. It's not a whole lot of food, but it's some of the best you'll ever eat. Still, it's more than two bites of steak, six beans, and half a potato. It's more like... half a duck.

 

[WolfThomas]

1. If it's a good restaurant you usually need to book in advance. Also a truly great restaurant not a pseudo-fancy one, should have excellent service.

2. & 3. Really varies from restaurant to restaurant.

4. Cannot disagree there.

There was a restaurant at town I was on placement at. It cost 100AUD to get a meal there. You didn't get to order anything (just dietary requirements) and the Chef decided on the day what he'd cook. On paper it sounds terrible. But in real life it was amazing, everything was a small portion but you got like a dozen or different courses each matched to wines and other drinks, by the end you felt full bordering on bloated, each tiny meal was amazing like I could not believe food tasted that good. Would I go there regularly? No way, but as a once off experience I did not regret it.

 

[Neverhoodian]

I hear you, OP. I remember once when I was visiting a friend down in southern California, and a friend of his fiance invited us all to a fancy restaurant. I had just arrived earlier that afternoon, and the only food I had eaten the entire day was a single Cinnabon roll at the airport I had departed from. Needless to say, I was ravenous by this point.

It turns out that this particular restaurant was a bit unusual, as it only served appetizers. The idea was that each person ordered a platter, then shared it with everyone else. After waiting for forty minutes, the food finally arrived. I was crestfallen when I saw the platters. The portions were an absolute joke, even by appetizer standards. I swear my entire "meal" consisted of two shrimp (and not the jumbo type either), a spoonful of rice, a single sushi roll segment, and a gourmet taco about as long as my index finger. We had agreed to split the check evenly amongst ourselves, but even so we each had to fork out nearly $30. The experience left me in a rather grumpy mood until the following day when I finally got some real food in my system (the blow my wallet had taken was still smarting, though).

Compare that experience to eating at a local hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant a few months ago with the same number of friends. The food was delicious with substantial portions (indeed, it was a little too much), the service was friendly and speedy and the check was about $30 total. I'll take that over hoity-toity restaurants with overpriced, gnat-sized portions any day.

 

[Kapol]

I had the same sort of dining experience on a cruise. They had a fancy dinner for a cruise I went on that's exactly what you were describing. We didn't have to wait to get in, but the food took ages to arrive. I think it took... 2 or 3 hours for three trays with barely any food to be brought to us. The amount they gave us was stupid. Most of the food was good to be fair. Some of it was excellent. But at the same time, we were barely served at all and had to wait for hours to get places of food that contained less food then the size of my fist at times. It was pretty bad.